First day out VA gun season !

[6pt-sika]

Well this is a first ! I’ve never waited six days before going out the first time during the VA gun season . But it turned Black Friday is the first day for me this year . Carried a Mannlicher Schoenauer MC 7x57 carbine loaded with Hornady 139 SST handloads . Saw this little 8 point at 07:45ish at 75ish yards one shot a forty yard death run and the deal was sealed !

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[Griff]

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[Drawdown]

Congrats, a MS just seems it was best made for the American Deerwoods!

[wolfdog]

Very nice!

[FLINT]

Great job!

nice deer!

[GunnyMack]

I can taste the jerky already!

[6pt-sika]

I can taste the jerky already!

No usually my making it into edible portions includes me removing the back straps and bagging them , then the fish and bagging them . Then anything else is cut from the bone and bagged to either be ground or used in stew .

[GunnyMack]

Anytime I shoot /shot a buck he would go into the grinder sans backstraps.
Most of the does would go for actual cuts.
Provided it's cool enough I'll hang my deer at least until rigormortise leaves the body but a few have hung months when they freeze solid! They just get more tender!!

[6pt-sika]

Anytime I shoot /shot a buck he would go into the grinder sans backstraps.
Most of the does would go for actual cuts.
Provided it's cool enough I'll hang my deer at least until rigormortise leaves the body but a few have hung months when they freeze solid! They just get more tender!!

I don’t let them hang . Nothing against it I just like getting it done right away then I don’t feel like it’s something hanging over my head that I need to do . As to quality of the meat no one’s ever complained when I cooked any .

[6pt-sika]

Point in fact ! One week maybe fifteen years ago I was having a good week . I’d killed two or three during the week and had then hanging unskinned . Saturday rolls around and a friends coming to hunt with me . Long story short when I got dark that night I had seven hanging , not all mine but still . I checked the weather and Sunday was supposed to get into the high 60’s . So I asked my friend what time he could come over and help me skin and cut them up , the reply was “I can’t I’m going to the Redskin game” . So Sunday morning I was outside at 7 AM at 14:30 I had just finished the last one . So anymore a deer is typically in the freezer or in ziploc bags within three hours of the time the gun went bang .

[6pt-sika]

My gunsmith buddy and I were thinking about getting a walk in cooler thing to put outside of his butchering room . This was back when we’d damage control hunt in the hot months . But then we decided perhaps it was better not to do that or we’d end with ten or twelve in there we’d need to get done

[GunnyMack]

I'm with you, when you have a pile of deer you find out who you can count on.

About 12 years ago my 3 buddies and I had at least a dozen hanging, frozen. The week after the season closed we proceeded to skin, butcher, grind all of them for sausage.
We had breakfast sausage, hot & sweet Italian coming out of our ears!